Fonda Honors Redford at TCM Fest: 'We Have to Fight'
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- Jane Fonda opened the 17th Annual TCM Classic Film Festival at the TCL Chinese Theatre Thursday night, honoring her late co-star Robert Redford with a screening of their 1967 Neil Simon comedy Barefoot In The Park, preceded by an on-stage conversation with TCM host Ben Mankiewicz.
- Fonda confessed she was smitten with Redford from their first meeting on 1966's The Chase, recalling she asked him about affairs and he replied he'd only have one 'with somebody like a hooker' — and that he later rubbed against her in a bed scene on Barefoot, saying 'I had such a crush on him, it was painful.'
- Fonda praised Redford's founding of Sundance, saying 'He could have built an empire and instead he built a nest for artists,' noting he paid for the festival out of his own pocket every year rather than seeking Hollywood money.
- Fonda revealed Redford was chronically two to three hours late on set — on their 1978 film The Electric Horseman, the habit stretched a planned two-month shoot into six months, and by their 2017 reunion on Our Souls At Night she had grown angry enough to call it out.
- Fonda lamented not being asked to honor Redford at this year's Oscars, where his The Way We Were co-star Barbra Streisand delivered the In Memoriam tribute instead, though Fonda said she thought it was 'fabulous' that Streisand got the spotlight for that 'iconic' film.
- Fonda invoked Redford's name to oppose the planned Paramount takeover of Warner Bros — the very studio where she and Redford made Barefoot In The Park — declaring: 'We have to fight. I want to fight in the spirit of Robert Redford.'
Why it matters: Fonda used her tribute to Redford — a co-star across four films spanning five decades — as a platform to oppose the planned Paramount-Warner Bros merger, framing Hollywood's consolidation as antithetical to the independent spirit Redford embodied through Sundance, which he personally funded rather than seeking studio money.
